Why You Don't Hear From Kim Basinger Anymore

In the late 1970s, Kim Basinger entered the public consciousness as a top fashion model. After a few years of magazine covers and fashion show runways, Basinger segued into acting. She broke through in Hollywood as several women have, before and since: as a Bond girl. Playing Domino opposite Sean Connery in 1983's "Never Say Never Again" propelled her to stardom, and it wasn't long before she became one of the hottest female actors of that era. Further high-profile movies included "The Man Who Loved Women," "The Natural," and the controversy-generating erotic drama "9½ Weeks." She also delved into comedy (alongside "Die Hard" star Bruce Willis in "Blind Date," and with Jeff Bridges in "Nadine"), and played journalist Vicki Vale in director Tim Burton's visionary blockbuster "Batman." Basinger continued to be a marquee star throughout the 1990s and 2000s, including playing Eminem's mom in 2002's "8 Mile," and her critically acclaimed role in the 1997 noir thriller "L.A. Confidential," for which she won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a SAG Award.

In 1993 she married fellow actor Alec Baldwin, a tumultuous union that ended in acrimonious divorce less than 10 years later. Meanwhile, Basinger's acting career continued, albeit more sporadically than it had been.

While once ubiquitous on red carpets, she faded back, taking on roles that interested her, but no longer engaged in the relentless Hollywood rat race — so what has the actor been up to since? 

Kim Basinger's Hollywood career was at its peak in 1989, when she and a group of investors spent $20 million to buy Braseltown, a small town in Georgia. A few years later, she backed out of a film called "Boxing Helena," which was later made with Sherilyn Fenn in the titular role of a woman whose limbs were amputated.

Years after, those decisions combined to crush Basinger financially. With "Boxing Helena," Main Line Pictures alleged that Basinger verbally agreed to play the role, but reneged at the last minute. She was sued for breach of contract; after a trial, the jury awarded Main Line damages of $7.4 million, plus an additional $1.5 million for acting in bad faith. (The verdict was overturned the following year; in 1995, she settled, paying $3.8 million.)

In the wake of the original verdict, Basinger filed for bankruptcy in 1993. That proved to be a death blow for the plans to develop Braselton into a tourist destination, which, for all intents and purposes, remained in limbo. "It's deader than it was three years ago," the town's postmaster, James Deaton, told the Chicago Tribune. Looking back on how it all played out, Basinger remained saddened. "None of it made any sense, and it was all so misrepresented," Basinger said of Braselton's fate in a 1997 interview with The Associated Press. "And the sad part about it is that nothing good became of it."

Kim Basinger's marriage to Alec Baldwin was both troubled and tumultuous. There had been numerous tabloid reports of the couple arguing in public, and in late 2000, they separated and subsequently filed for divorce. Those who knew them were far from surprised. "I've known for a year-and-a-half that she was thinking about this," her father, Don Basinger, told People at the time.

Their divorce was contentious and very public, with the two battling for custody of their daughter, Ireland Baldwin. Years later, Basinger looked back on the nasty split when she appeared alongside actor Jada Pinkett Smith on an episode of her online talk show, "Red Table Talk." As Basinger recalled, the split was made even more difficult by all the press coverage received, recalling (via People) that she and Baldwin "went through a heavy-duty, very out loud when you're in the public, divorce."

When Pinkett Smith asked whether she and Baldwin saw "eye to eye" when it came to raising their daughter (via the Daily Mail), she responded, "Eye to eye? No ... Alec's a funny one. We're all fine and we all get along, whatever ... but he's a challenge." Interviewed by Net-a-Porter in 2016, Basinger explained why, after working out a custody agreement, she tried to keep her daughter out of the spotlight during her childhood. "Divorce is hard on a kid, no matter how you cut it," she said. "And ours was very public and nasty."

While Kim Basinger never stopped acting, she did make a conscious decision to step back from the relentless pursuit of stardom required to maintain a career as a Hollywood A-lister. While that may not have provided much of a boost for her career, it certainly did wonders for her personal life.

Living a more normal existence — out of the spotlight — went a long way toward reducing her stress level. "I truly have no regrets," she said in an interview with Georgia Journal (as reported by Looper). "I try to live every day in the present, not having one foot in the future or one foot in the past."

Her decision to retreat from Hollywood, she revealed, was necessary to shore up her mental health, which had taken a hit after all those years in the Hollywood fast lane. As she told People in 2013 (via the Daily Mail), she loved the work, but not the machine surrounding it. "In this business you can be at the top of the world and at the bottom of the barrel, and you're grape juice. I've been at both ends," she explained. The stress of stardom, and the constant struggle to maintain it, had eventually left her with so much anxiety that she was prescribed medication to cope. "Now I wake up and enjoy life," she gushed. "I didn't want to live on drugs."

Kim Basinger has long used her celebrity status to advance a cause that's very close to her heart: animal rights. In fact, she was one of the first celebs to appear in PETA's now-iconic "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" ad campaign, in which stars shed their clothes to protest the use of animal fur in fashion. Basinger's association with PETA (a.k.a. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has remained strong; in 2021, she wrote the foreword for PETA president Ingrid Newkirk's book, "250 Vital Things Your Cat Wants You to Know."

Basinger has expressed her activism in other ways as well, such as appearing in a public service announcement for Farm Sanctuary, a California-based organization that protests the treatment of animals in factory farming.

Basinger has also protested the practice of dogs being consumed as food in South Korea. In 2019, she visited the country's capital, Seoul, to protest dogs being killed for meat, and also met with local politicians to urge them to pass a bill that would criminalize killing dogs and cats for food. "I do think that government is going to have to not turn a blind eye and really come up with solutions like this," Basinger told CNN. "South Korea is going to be the leader for this, it's going to be known for this and it's going to trickle down."

In 2013, Kim Basinger's career completed a full circle when she returned to her roots as a model. As Variety reported at the time, Basinger — then 60 — signed with IMG Models, the same agency that was representing her daughter, Ireland Baldwin. "We are proud to be working with a distinguished and talented actor such as Kim Basinger," said IMG's senior VP and managing director, Ivan Bart, in a statement. "Kim has a powerful appeal on screen that will lend itself as a strong asset for us to seek innovative partnerships across the modeling and entertainment platform for Kim."

Being signed as a model as she launched into her sixth decade wasn't something that Basinger took for granted. In a September 2021 interview with Vulture, she shared her recognition that she was in a rare position that few people — even Hollywood stars — are fortunate enough to experience. "You get a lot of offers, being in this business," she said. "It's a very privileged position to be in."

Meanwhile, Basinger also teased a potential screen comeback. While she didn't offer many details about what exactly that might entail, she hinted at an upcoming project that was apparently in the works. "You get offers your whole life," she noted. "They've never stopped, and I'm happy to say that I'm going back on the screen pretty soon myself."

While Kim Basinger's cinematic output certainly diminished after the turn of the century, by no means did she retire from acting outright. In 2017, Basinger joined her highest-profile project in years when she became part of Hollywood's pre-eminent BDSM-themed film franchise when she was cast in "Fifty Shades Darker," the sequel to "Fifty Shades of Grey," as the ex-lover of kinky billionaire Christian Grey (played by Jamie Dornan). 

While those films certainly pushed the envelope, it was old hat for the star of "9½ Weeks" — although she was adamant that her earlier role had nothing to do with her new one. As she explained to Net-a-Porter, the only reason she signed on for "Fifty Shades" was because of the insistence of her daughter, Ireland Baldwin. "She wasn't enthralled with the first movie, but she knew the books," Basinger explained. "She said, 'You have to do it, Mom, it's really powerful for women. Your character is about a woman's power.' At first I thought, 'Eww, I can't do that dominatrix stuff, it's not me.' But it's not like that. My character's strength is more emotional and mental — she shows Christian all his moves."

Basinger briefly reprised the role in the third film, "Fifty Shades Freed," in 2018. Since then, her only screen credits have been a voice role in the animated "Back Home Again," and a voice role in the 2023 video game "Crime Boss: Rockay City."

The screen comeback that Kim Basinger hinted at in 2021 apparently came into focus in January 2022, when Deadline reported that she had filmed a role in a new project from famed film director Peter Bogdanovich; best known for his Oscar-winning 1971 classic "The Last Picture Show," he'd died a week earlier. This was not a film, however, but an NFT that could only be viewed on the Ethereum blockchain. Titled "LIT Project 2: Flux," filming had taken place just weeks before the director's death, with Bogdanovich directing Basinger through a range of emotions. Bogdanovich then narrated each of these emotional displays, and had reportedly been excited about working in what he viewed as an emerging new medium for filmmaking. 

"After telling a friend the other day that I had just worked with Peter Bogdanovich, he said, 'Wow! You were literally in his last picture show!' I thought about it and realized, what an honor to be the last artist he ever directed," Basinger told the outlet, reflecting on working with the acclaimed director. "Although we had just met, and it was only for a small project on a Sunday afternoon in December, I am truly grateful I got to meet and work with him. I only wish we could have done a real movie together ... Such a beautiful man."

There's no denying that Kim Basinger has dated her share of celebrities over the years. Prior to her failed marriage with Alec Baldwin, her famous boyfriends included Jan-Michael Vincent, one-time co-star Richard Gere, producer Jon Peters, and even late rock icon Prince. 

Since 2014, Basinger has been involved with celebrity hairstylist Mitch Stone. And while her previous relationships unfolded under the harsh glare of the media spotlight, Basinger has kept her relationship with Stone a closely guarded secret. They were first spotted together in 2014, packing on the PDA while vacationing in Hawaii. The following year, the couple had returned to Hawaii — and sparked speculation that they'd tied the knot, due to the matching rings they wore at the time. While that has not been confirmed, what has is that the couple have kept going strong, and kept their relationship to themselves.

During Kim Basinger's 2022 appearance on "Red Table Talk," she revealed that she began suffering from extreme anxiety, which manifested itself in agoraphobia. It came to a head one day while buying groceries. "My basket was almost full, and I found something really overcoming me in such a way that I couldn't breathe. So I left the basket, and I made it to my car, and that was the last time I drove for almost six, seven months," she said (via The Hollywood Reporter). 

Her anxiety escalated to the point that she stopped leaving the house altogether. Inviting friends to her home, she added, wasn't a solution. "We tried that, and it's really horrible to feel that it won as really fiercely as [it] did during those years, you know, and not know what it was. It's like something just completely shuts down within you, and you have to relearn everything," she said, revealing that she even had to learn to drive all over again. 

Agoraphobia took a heavy toll on her, physically as well as mentally. "You live with a dry mouth all the time, you're very shaky, you're just so exhausted all the time," she said. Eventually, she underwent treatment, but admitted she was initially reluctant to tell anybody what she was going through for fear of being stigmatized. "I was really scared because I didn't want to tell anybody in my work what was happening," she said.

Kim Basinger's daughter, Ireland Baldwin, was blessed with her mother's beauty and impeccable bone structure. Not surprisingly, she followed in her mom's footsteps by entering the world of modeling. In late 2022, she took to social media to announce that she and her boyfriend — musician and record producer RAC (André Allen Anjos) — were expecting a baby. Basinger marked the moment on social media, sharing a sweet post on Instagram featuring a series of vintage photos of herself and her daughter, when she was a child. "This was my baby... and she will soon have... hers..." Basinger wrote in the caption.

Basinger joined her daughter and some pals for a baby shower — held at a strip club, and documented by posts that Baldwin shared on her Instagram Story. Her cousin, Alaia Baldwin, was also on hand, and in her Instagram Story post described Basinger as "the hottest granny there is" (via People).

The following May, the couple welcomed a daughter, Holland. Of course, that blessed event meant that Basinger was now a grandmother. It was a role that she apparently relished, apparent in a video that Baldwin posted on Instagram, in which the gushing grandma entertains Holland with an oversized stuffed version of beloved Sesame Street character Elmo. "@kim.basinger's latest role as lady elmo," Baldwin wrote.